


Snape's Reward

by Azashenya



Series: Aza's Harry Potter 'Verse [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 14:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2854331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azashenya/pseuds/Azashenya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his death Snape passes through the Veil.  We follow him while he watches the defeat of Voldemort in the world he left behind and struggles with meeting Lily again after so long and so much.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: The World and Characters of Harry Potter belong to J.K.Rowling and the fact that I borrow them is a testament to her writing that brought them to life.</p>
<p>This story takes as Canon the Seven Books and builds outwards from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snape's Reward

Lying in the shabby room of the Shrieking Shack, Severus Snape can feel Nagini's poison seeping through his body even as his blood leaves it through his pressing fingers. Neither spell nor potion can help him now, none could know that better than the Potions master. He can feel the cold spreading through his body.

His thoughts are still shockingly clear, he wouldn't have expected that. It is a relief, at last, to put aside his masks for good, to finally lay down the burden Dumbledore asked him to carry for so long. And yet, the task feels incomplete. The students are as safe as he ever could make them, at least, whose who aren't in the fight, aren't even now dying. Those he has to hope others will protect, but what of the other? What of Her son?

A whisper of sound and movement, as if at a great distance. Then Harry Potter is standing over him, green eyes staring down in hatred.

Opening his mouth Severus tries to tell him everything but all that he can force out past the searing pain is a whispered croak that contains nothing. As the boy, no, man, leans towards him desperation makes Severus reach out and clutch him closer.

This time he concentrates on only two words, each of them taking a force of desperation to push past the agony in his neck. “Take... it.... Take... it....”

With the discipline of decades and the desperation of a dying man Severus Snape forces his own memories out of his body without the help of a wand to draw them out. Things he would want to tell Lily. Things he could never, in life, tell her son. Things Dumbledore wanted the boy told. A final, desperate desire to be understood. To be forgiven.

The silver memories flow from him and to his relief the boy, man, catches them in a flask. Severus knows he will be heard. Weak now his fingers slip from Harry's robes. The world is starting to go black, retreating. The boy has moved away slightly, holding the flask, his head turned a little so that his father's face is occluding his mother's eyes in Snape's fading vision.

“Look... at... me...” is his last, pain saturated whisper.

The boy leans closer again, his green eyes shining with reflected light, open wide. His mother's eyes. Lily's eyes. Snape's battered heart weeps and beats no more.

~~~~

Green eyes fade and the world is gone.

A timeless interval.

Slowly Severus becomes aware of sensations and sounds, the press of a seat beneath and behind him, a swaying and a rhythmic cer-clunk. His thoughts move like molasses as he puzzles over this. He feels like a puppet with its strings cut as he tries to find the connecting threads of himself and his life.

He opens his eyes.

His surroundings are shining white and they're both hauntingly familiar and confusingly strange. A small room with two walls of padded benches beneath luggage racks. A wooden door across from a large window and outside the window is only blank whiteness.

Severus looks away from the disconcerting blankness and down at his hands. They are adult sized, marked by years of potion making. He frowns at them, they don't seem to fit with this room, they are... too large, that's what it is, what this is!

Snape looks up and around the too-white train compartment, recognising it now as the Hogwarts express, taking him to school or.... He remembers now the shrieking shack and for a moment feels a distant echo of pain... is it taking him away from Hogwarts? Forever? What fate does he ride to meet? Clean his hands may seem but Severus Snape knows how much blood soaks them, knows it almost down to the last drop. He never expected to be rewarded, he has never expected praise (although that never stopped the treacherous desire for it). He might hope to meet Lily once more, to hope for her forgiveness but cold experience laughs mockingly at his hopes.

Trying to escape his own thoughts Snape stands then hesitates in shock at finding he can. Covering the lapse he pulls his dark robes around him and enters the corridor. As he does so the cer-clunks begin to slow and by the time he has found the outside door the train seems to have stopped.

Severus hesitates with one hand on the door handle, wondering if he wants to know where he is, expecting nothing good.

There is no point waiting.

Snape wrenches open the door and strides through it, down the train steps and onto... a platform.

It's a train station but it's not like any he has seen. Well, that isn't quite right. In different ways it is like every train station he has ever seen and the town he can see around it is like every town, a collage of a hundred different places, all pressed together.

At first the platform seems empty then Snape sees a tall figure striding towards him, wearing midnight blue and topped with white hair. The sight of him triggers a roil of emotions in Snape, gladness to see one who was the closest he's had to a friend for the past sixteen years and a combined resentment and fear that Dumbledore will tell him his task, his penance, is not yet over or that he has failed.

“Albus,” Snape clips the word short, guarding himself as he has so often needed to.

“Severus!” there is nothing but delight in Dumbledore's voice and smiling face.

Reaching Snape he clasps his hands. “Severus, thank you!”

Bright blue eyes meet black and Snape tries to pull away, almost frightened by the burst of emotion threatening him.

“But...” he can't help thinking of all the ways he failed over the years. Every mistake from the smallest to the ones that led to Lily Potter's death. “Was it enough?”

“It was all we could do. Whether it was enough is in Harry's hands now.”

Snape flinches, that wasn't what he meant by the question. Asking more clearly feels like stripping himself naked, exposing raw nerves.

“Was it enough to atone? Does she... will she.. am I...?” He can't make himself say the word 'forgiven' aloud but his lips trace its shape and Dumbledore's sharp eyes catch it. There is soft understanding in Albus's eyes that Severus cannot bear to face.

“Oh, Severus. You have done more, borne more, than anyone should be asked to do. I should be begging your forgiveness for ever asking it of you.”

Snape shakes his head, he doesn't want to hear Dumbledore say that. Not here. Not now. Another time and place, yes, definitely, but not right now, it's too much right now.

Dumbledore watches him shrewdly for a moment. “Well, perhaps later. Severus, we would not have the opportunity we have now if not for your actions, all of your actions.”

Snape winces away from the implication.

“She and James were both members of the Order of the Phoenix long before you, Severus, and she is a generous and loving soul. I think you have much less to fear than you believe you do.”

Snape wants to believe him but cannot face the terrible risk of getting his hopes up and being wrong.

“Where is she?” so he can choose whether to avoid or seek that place.

“She and James are watching over Harry, tonight especially. Come, you should see this too.”

Still holding Snape's hands Dumbledore pulls them away. It isn't like apparating but rather like time and space are malleable in this place, almost dream-like in fluidity.

When it stops they are standing in a Quidditch box, one out of hundreds or is it thousands?

There are familiar faces around him but Snape has only a moment to glance at them before his attention is caught by what they are watching.

Instead of a Quidditch game there is the world he left behind and as he looks at different parts of it it comes into clearer focus. Closer again and he seems to fall into it as if it were a giant Pensieve.

At first he sees himself, his body, blood soaked and pale on the warped floorboards of the shrieking shack. He flinches and pulls back, up through the ceiling. Looking around he sees Hogwarts castle. He thinks of Harry and in a flash he is beside the boy as Harry tumbles to the Headmaster's floor beside the Pensieve. Snape knows exactly what he has just been watching.

He watches the boy lying on the carpet and wishes he could hear the thoughts going through Harry's head but this seems a power as far from the dead as from the living. For a moment Snape is tempted to try legilimency but instinct warns him against it.

The boy sits up slowly.

Snape is aware of many others watching with him although only Harry can be seen in the room, even the portrait frames are empty. For a moment Snape has an urge to look around, to count the frames and see if Hogwarts has counted him as a true Headmaster but his heart quails and he keeps his eyes on Harry, uncertain whether he wants his portrait to be hanging there or not.

The eyes of the dead follow Harry as he strides through the castle. His invisibility cloak does little to impede vision that has already passed through the Veil. When Harry hesitates at the door to the Great Hall Snape hesitates with him. Unknowingly they share a moment of longing for one last glimpse of familiar faces.

Severus Snape watches as Harry walks out into the dark grounds, he observes the conversation with Longbottom and Harry's hesitation at the sight and sound of Ginny Weasley.

Then Harry reaches the Dementors.

Hundreds of Dementors and one young wizard with no way to summon a patronus without revealing his position. If only he could, Snape would summon one for Harry and he can sense that those around him feel the same way.

Then Harry pulls the old snitch from the pouch at his neck and, holding it to his lips, he whispers something. The snitch falls open, revealing a cracked stone within.

“Well done, Harry. Well done,” Dumbledore murmurs from Snape's left.

Four ghostly figures materialise around Harry but Snape has eyes only for one of them. Lily. His heart bursts with joy and pain. He wants nothing more than for her to look at him, to see him, as she has not done since before they left school, since she gave up on him, since... since he called her 'mudblood' and lost her friendship.

Snape doesn't notice anything else that is happening until Lily vanishes again. Then he sees Voldemort, his former master. Snape stiffens, all his old masks slamming into place, all those years and layers of protection and skill at occlumency that kept him alive. He quickly remembers that he is dead, that The Dark Lord can no longer touch him and that there is no more risk of betrayal, but old defenses are hard to overcome and Snape doesn't waste attention now trying to change them.

Snape sees Voldemort raise his wand. “Defend yourself, foolish boy,” he mutters to himself. But the boy doesn't, he just watches Voldemort through his mother's eyes as the green light of the killing curse crosses the clearing and hits him full in the chest.

As the boy falls Snape hears Dumbledore murmur beside him, “I'll return.” By the time Snape turns his head the other has gone.

Looking back Snape sees that Voldemort too has fallen. He watches the shock ripple through the familiar faces of the Deatheaters. Frozen where they stand. Then Bellatrix, of course Bellatrix, rushes forward to her master's side, crying out to him. Even as Voldemort speaks and pushes her away Snape feels Dumbledore return. Snape turns to look at him but Dumbledore just smiles and squeezes his shoulder.

“All is well.”

Snape frowns and glances back into the world to see Narcissa kneeling beside Harry's body.

Snape shakes his head. “The boy is dead,” his voice sounds flat to his own ears. “The Dark Lord has finally succeeded.”

Albus Dumbledore shakes his head. “No, all that Voldemort has managed to kill is the piece of his own soul that was attached to Harry.”

“But...” Snape looks down again to see the Deatheaters laughing while Harry's body is tossed through the air. Beside him Dumbledore also watches.

“There is still Nagini, still one last horcrux. Harry knows that and I rather think that he is biding his time until he can be certain of Voldemort's death.”

Snape watches, finding it difficult to believe that the Potter Boy could be fooling all of those eyes with a feigned death.

“Are you certain that he isn't actually dead?”

“I am.”

During the procession Snape watches the boy, closer than any mortal eye could. He sees the shallow breaths, the flicker of pulse in his neck, the smallest of involuntary movements. Enough to tell him that, beyond hope and belief, the boy does survive.

Snape takes a savage satisfaction in seeing young Longbottom sever Nagini's head, in part avenging him although the boy doesn't know he is doing so. Snape takes a moment to appreciate how very far Longbottom has come in the last seven years.

Then Hagrid is screaming for Harry and Snape looks over to find the boy has gone. A moment later Snape spots his cloak-draped form then loses it again in the chaos of battle as reinforcements arrive: winged, hoved, elven, and wizarding.

Deatheaters are dying, overwhelmed by the numbers. People who once, a long time ago, Severus thought of as friends. People he's had to continue to treat as friends long after learning to despise them. It is an odd relief to see them die, to know they will no more be able to hurt others for their own amusement. For a moment he wonders if their deaths will mean he'll have to see them again. He is about to turn and ask Dumbledore when he sees Bellatrix and Molly Weasley. He has never liked the Wealeys much, never understood them. They were not at school together but their paths have crossed many times in the years since. As a child and youth the half-blood Snape would have given much to have the pure blood they value so little, or the love they flaunted between them, or the loving home they gave their children, so much richer than his cold childhood despite the lack of money.

Now, with a self-understanding he can no longer avoid he can see his own envy for what it is. Watching Molly now, as she fights Bellatrix, he can see, without scorn, that she has the true strength and bravery of Gryffindor.

Then Bellatrix falls and McGonnagal, Kingsley and Slughorn are blasted back from Voldemort, and Harry, finally, drops his invisibility cloak.

Snape watches Harry face down Voldemort. Surrounded by friends yet refusing to let any of them stand with him, refusing to let any more risk themselves to try to protect him.

Snape listens in rapt fascination as Voldemort taunts Harry to no avail, failing to goad either the boy or the watchers into rash action. Then Snape freezes with shock as Harry throws Snape's secrets at The Dark Lord, for all to hear, and Snape is certain they will hear, that those present will carry the tale of how he, Severus Snape, had been in love with Lily Potter. That he had asked Voldemort to spare her life. That he had turned spy for Dumbledore and then killed him only when Dumbledore was already dying.

Snape feels exposed. Laid bare for the whole world to see and gossip over. He detests the feeling. He tears himself away, craving a dark, quiet, secluded dungeon to hide in but Dumbledore's arm stops him.

“Peace, Severus.”

Snape glares at him. “He had no right,” he snarls, barely audible.

“No right to honour your sacrifices? No right to clear your reputation?” Dumbledore's gaze flickers to the scene below. “Keep watching, Severus.”

Reluctantly he does so, in time to catch Harry begging Voldemort, Riddle, to find some remorse. Not for Harry's sake, not for anyone's sake but his own. For Tom Riddle. For a last chance. Snape frowns. The boy cannot mean what he seems to mean, surely not. Not after everything The Dark Lord has done to others and to himself, damage that went as far as deliberately shattering his own soul.

Involuntarily Snape looks up and meets Dumbledore's eyes, knowing that his own will reflect his shock and his questions.

“Remorse can go a long way, my friend,” murmurs Dumbledore. “Almost as far as love.”

Numb, Snape returns to watching and listening. There is the final clash of killing curse and disarming charm and the Elder Wand flies into Harry's hand while Voldemort falls to the floor, dead at last.

A moment of shocked silence on both sides of the Veil is followed by an explosion of shouts and roars of celebration on both sides of the Veil.

Yet Snape is silent. Not that he isn't relieved, isn't glad, even more than glad, to see The Dark Lord finally ended, but it is overwhelmed by exhaustion. It is the kind of gladness that comes at the end of a very long day when you lie on your bed and realise you can finally rest. It is not the kind of glad that shouts.

Beside him, Dumbledore is also quiet.

Turning his head, Snape finds the old man still staring down into the world, looking pensive.

“Albus?”

Dumbledore looks up and his smile is as crooked as his nose. “I find I wonder what he could have been, if life had not shaped him as it did. What might have been the best that he could be.”

Snape has a very uncomfortable suspicion that Tom Riddle may not have been the only person Albus Dumbledore wondered that about. He is saved from needing to find a response by those around them pulling them into the celebrations. Snape is set off balance to find himself warmly included.

As they celebrate their surroundings slide and mutate from the Quidditch boxes to a huge party hall. Again Severus is reminded of dreams and he wonders what the rules are that govern this place, how it works.

Surrounded by the joyously celebrating, Snape feels as out of place as a broom in water, being made uncomfortable both by those who embrace and thank him and those who watch or avoid his gaze or presence. As soon as he can he slips away.

This place is as strange as his first impression, a jumbled maze of rooms and buildings from different times and places. Some buildings are there only in fragments while others appear again and again. Details are mutable.

When Snape grows tired of exploring the next door he opens leads to familiar dark steps, leading downwards. Following it Snape is unsurprised to find his dungeon office or, at least, a perfect replica of it. It is dimly lit and full of shadows and specimens, his desk and personal potions lab, and the door to his bedroom.

Snape freezes and fights back tears. If he has a home it is this. These small, dark rooms in the bowels of Hogwarts castle. Exhaustion hits him like a falling dragon. He closes the door and crosses to his bedroom where he falls onto his dark bed. He has a moment to wonder if the dead sleep before he falls asleep.

The dead don't dream.

~~

When Severus wakes, to the familiar, peaceful dark, he has no idea how long he has slept. There are no clocks and no signs of the outside world. Remembering the celebrations and assuming that they are continuing, Snape prefers to stay in here.

He explores the familiar rooms until a restless feeling sets him to potion making. He soon finds that any ingredients he desires will be waiting in his store when he needs them, in sufficient quantity. A potion maker's dream. The potions themselves still take care and attention to get right, can still go horribly wrong. He wouldn't want it any other way.

Severus loses himself in potion making. Precision and art combined. The only reliable joy in his life. No masks, no pretense, no lies, no confusing complications. Just himself and the potions and the absolute surety that this is who he is and where he belongs.

~~~

Some time later, Severus glances up from the set of four potions he is watching and he freezes. Lily is standing at the edge of the light, watching him. She smiles at him.

“I didn't want to interrupt and ruin your potions,” her voice is almost exactly how he remembers.

He is in shock, didn't expect to see her here, had almost forgotten in his concentration on the potions.

“Lily?”

Her smile broadens into a grin. “Yes. Had you forgotten me, Severus?” there is a soft edge of teasing in her voice.

“Never!”

Without thought Severus is moving across the room to her only to stop at the last moment, hesitating, watching. Lily closes the gap and hugs him.

“Thank you, Severus. Thank you.”

Snape shudders and wraps his arms tightly around her. His eyes well with tears and he cannot find the strength to fight them.

“But...” he cannot bear breaking this moment but he also cannot let her thank him without knowing it all. “It was I who betrayed you to The Dark Lord. I who told him the prophecy that sent him to kill you.” He clings to her as he awaits her response, only willing to let go if she pushes him away herself.

“I know,” her voice is soft. “I won't pretend that I wasn't angry at you when I found that out. That I didn't hate you and blame you for it. You and Pettigrew.”

Now Snape tries to pull back, his chest full of icy certainty, but now it is Lily who his clinging to him and he hasn't the will to fight against her embrace.

“I was angry at you at school, too. Angry that you wouldn't see that what you and your Deatheater friends were doing was wrong, where it was taking you. Taking all of us. Why wouldn't you listen to me? Was there anything I could have done to change your path?”

Snape remembers his younger self, so very long ago and very far away. He remembers his youthful sense of certainty about the shape of the world and his friends' and his place in it. A certainty that couldn't even be shaken by having a best friend who was muggle born, who was a mudblood. From across a gulf of years and experience Snape flinches.

He replies reluctantly, “No, I don't think there was. Not then.”

Lily steps backwards and Snape reluctantly lets go. She places her hands on his shoulders and looks up at him.

“I missed you, Sev. I missed my friend, at school and after.”

A bitter smile twists Snape's lips.

“I was there. You were the one avoiding me after...”

“After you called me a mudblood and I realised that nothing I could say would change your attitudes? When I realised that walking away was all I had left?”

Snape hangs his head, hiding behind his hair.

“I never willingly used that word again.”

“But you still became a Deatheater, still chose His side.”

Snape swallows, his right hand seeking his left forearm of its own accord. “I thought I had no choice. It was all I knew and what was expected. Even you expected that of me.”

Lily frowns at him but Snape is distracted, there is something off, something not quite right. He looks down at his arm and pulls his sleeve up. The skin is smooth and unblemished with no sign of the dark skull with its snake-tongue. Snape runs his fingers over it, frowning.

Murmuring half to himself he says, “It has been invisible before, when he was gone, but... even then I could still sense it there, sense the patch of magic under my skin.”

Lily's eyes follow his. “Only the scars and changes that are part of our self image seem to come through the Veil.” She points to his fingers. “Like making potions is part of yours. Perhaps the mark is gone because it wasn't truly part of you.”

“Perhaps, or perhaps it only left when The Dark Lord died,” his words are bitter and self-condemning.

Lily sighs.

“We've spent a lot of time watching through the Veil, James and I. Watching our son growing up in a loveless house, the victim of my sister's jealousy, and we bitterly wanted to help him but were unable to do more than watch. I feared what such a childhood would twist him into, I've seen what kind of damage it can do.”

Snape meets her gaze for a moment then looks away again, knowing that she is remembering what she saw of his own childhood. She continues.

“Watching our friends suffering, even if Voldemort was thought gone. Watching you, Severus Snape, you and Peter Pettigrew. At first out of anger, a desire for revenge, to see what was coming to you.”

Lily's hands hold tight to his shoulders, the only things keeping Snape standing there, listening to this.

“Then we watched seeking understanding, each of us needing to understand how and why a friend could betray us so. James found his answer quickly, Pettigrew was a coward and a sneak and he never stopped being a coward and a sneak. You... you were never that simple. By the time I had the pieces of what happened, from watching you and from asking other who had seen it, you were changing. What my words could never manage your own regret was doing. You chose a hard road, Severus.” She smiles a crooked little smile. “Why did you always have to make things so hard for yourself?”

Snape shakes his head. “I don't know. If I knew how to do things differently I would.”

“Look at me.”

Reluctantly Snape lifts his chin, losing the protective curtain of hair to look into her green eyes. It hurts. His vision swims and he blinks away the tears.

His voice is a harsh whisper, “He has your eyes, you know.”

“I know. I've seen him.”

They stand, looking at each other, with Snape feeling frozen, not daring to move.

“Can I have my friend back, Severus?” her question is painfully soft and gentle.

Breathing out, Snape closes his eyes feeling, as he does so, the tears squeezed out to run down his cheeks. His lips quiver, unable to choose an expression.

“After everything I've done? What it cost you?”

“After what it cost you and everything you've done since.”

Snape takes another breath and opens his eyes, needing to watch her expression. He would use legilimency if he dared.

“Am I.... Do....”

She waits patiently, letting him find the words in his own time.

“Can you forgive me?”

“Yes.”

Snape can see the loophole in his question, he closes it. “Do you forgive me?”

She laughs softly with both fondness and exasperation. “Yes, Severus. I forgive you for the harm your old decisions brought to me and mine. Now will you forgive yourself for the harm they brought to you and yours?”

Snape blinks, completely blindsided.

“Forgive myself?”

Lily nods. “For the years of pain and fear and danger. For decisions that left you without friends for long, lonely years. For decisions that tore your heart when the consequences rebounded on one you loved. For the choices those decisions forced on you. For the loss of future chances of friendship or love. Are you willing to forgive yourself for those? Willing to let yourself try again?”

There is a long pause before Snape whispers, “I don't know.”

She gives him a gentle smile. “Thing about it but don't think too hard or for too long, Sev. I miss my friend and I think you will find that there are others willing to be your friend if you are willing to try.”

Snape nods. “I... I'll think about it.”

He watches her in silence, filling his mind with the shape of her face, her eyes. She will never be his, never be Lily Snape. He has known that for a long, long time, even as he clung to his love for her, clung to the only love he has ever been certain of. He has known that ever since she died. But to be friends again? That he hadn't expected either. He had hoped that she wouldn't hate him, that she might, possibly, forgive him but not that she would ever be willing to be his friend again.

“I want to be friends again,” the whisper feels like one of the most difficult, most dangerous things he has ever forced himself to say.

Lily's grin is blinding. “Good! And as your friend I get to tell you if I think you are being an idiot or sabotaging yourself, agreed?”

Snape frowns, wondering what he is letting himself in for. “And I get to tell you if I think you are pushing too much?”

Green eyes narrow at him but she is still smiling. “Maybe.”

He raises an eyebrow and looks down his hooked nose at her but she just grins at him, unrepentant.

She shrugs. “Well, so we'll figure out the details as we go along, isn't that how it usually works?”

His lips twitch into a smile and he lets her drag him out of his dark dungeon and into the sunlight. James, Sirius, Remus, and Tonks are waiting for them under a tree, beside a picnic rug and basket. James and Sirius are both sprawled, occupying space, while Remus Lupin and Tonks sit together, each with an arm behind the other as they lean comfortably.

Snape hesitates, hit by an overwhelming urge to run back into his safe, understandable, predictable dungeon. Lily doesn't give him a chance, dragging him forward and down onto the rug.

“Look who I found, hiding away in a dungeon,” Lily proclaims.

They greet him with three variations on “Hello, Severus” and one 'Whatcha Snape” and Snape looks up at them in shock. Not a single one of them used his hated nickname and while they didn't exactly sound overjoyed to see him none of them spoke in the mocking or overtly hostile tones he had learned to expect.

“Uh, hello,” he nearly stutters in the shock and his voice and face chill by old reflex. Yet none of them jump on this as a chance to mock and a warm hand squeezes his arm. Lily smiles reassuringly at him when he turns to look at her.

He remembers her earlier words and reminds himself that The Dark Lord is truly gone this time and his own role is revealed. Forcing himself to drop some of his old, habitual masks he looks over at the four watching faces and attempts a friendly smile. He suspects that it isn't a very good attempt.

Sirius is watching him as if watching a snake that he expects to strike. Snape finds this oddly reassuring. If Sirius Black had been looking friendly Snape would have been sure it was all just a trap of some kind.

James's expression confuses Severus, there is none of the mocking arrogance he remembers so well from their school years. Nor the open hostility or condemnation or hate he has every right to expect. Instead there is something like understanding and... pity? Snape tears his eyes away, not wanting to see. He can feel his lips curling into his habitual sneer and he presses them together to suppress it.

When he looks over at Tonks and Lupin Tonks gives him a smile and a cheery wave, her bright pink hair almost glowing in the sun.

“Whatcha Snape,” she repeats her greeting.

Snape's lips quirk into a small smile, oddly glad to see her there. At least they only have a short history between them although short doesn't mean there's no pain there. He considers her a moment before responding.

“Hello, Tonks.”

Lupin is leaning against her. He isn't as young as Severus remembers him at school but he does look decidedly younger and less worn than he did during the year he taught there. In fact he looks much happier and healthier than Snape has ever seen him.

Lupin smiles his little half smile and speaks in his soft, almost hesitant way. “Hello, Severus.”

Snape nods in greeting. “Remus. You're looking well.”

His smile widens. “I am well, being dead agrees with me. No wolf, you see.”

“Ah. That is... interesting.”

“It is. In fact I've already found myself in a few conversations on the subject. You'll find there is a lot of interesting debate over the various questions of our existence here.”

Snape lifts an eyebrow, interested despite himself.

Lupin continues and the conversation slowly expands in both subject matter and participants. When the picnic basket is opened Snape is surprised to find the food pleasantly enjoyable despite not having felt hunger since his arrival. By the end of the visit, while things are not yet comfortable between them, Snape is surprised to find himself joining in as they make plans to do this again.

 

~~~~

 

When Lord Voldemort dies what comes through the Veil is a shriveled, raw-skinned mockery of a human child. A soul that has lost most of itself, without even a scrap of regret or love to give it strength. So twisted and deformed that all he can know is pain. Without the strength to lend even a smudge of self to his surroundings.

There is one figure waiting for him. A soul more intact that his but still badly twisted, marked by the long, delighted use of Dark Magic. Bellatrix Lestrange shuffles over to her master and scoops him up, wrapping him in her own cloak and cradling him like a baby.

She carries him into the dark depths of the buildings to spend her death with the one thing her hairy heart had ever loved, her Master, her Lord. They were never again seen by another soul.


End file.
